I believe there is a direct relationship between
sexual politics in the priesthood/hierarchy and any reform group’s ability to
change the church. The key to VOTF’s survival and success lies in backing the
right issues, understanding the needs and culture of the priesthood/hierarchy
that owns and controls the church, and being relentless in the art of polite
public confrontation that exposes sexual and financial improprieties and compels
other Catholics to join and support you for change through strategic action.

Sexual politics in the
priesthood/hierarchy

The myth of sexuality in the priesthood is that
it is comprised overwhelmingly of straight men who are 99.9% sexually chaste in
faithfulness to their promise/vow of celibacy. Mandatory celibacy is part of the
power base of the priesthood/hierarchy. Because it serves a political function,
a priest’s sexuality is not private, but a public issue. Catholics have been
taught to honor and support priests because they profess to have forgone a
traditional family to lead sexually chaste lives in prayer and service to the
people of the church. That’s the ideal. The reality is quite different.

For centuries, gay men have been beaten, burned
at the stake, tortured and killed for being whom God made them. They have
suffered great loss personally and collectively. Like any group of persecuted
people, they have sought safe places to hide and thrive. The priesthood, with
its public and mandatory promise/vow of celibacy, became a perfect haven of
safety and instant respect for gay men. It serves them well because it’s
socially acceptable for them not to marry a woman and they live in-close with
other men – somewhat beyond suspicion. They enjoy a comfortable lifestyle
replete with the adulation of parishioners who have been taught to believe in
the myth of total sexual abstinence within the clerical celibate lifestyle.

Gay men’s common history of suffering and the
search for belonging, especially post Stonewall (google “Stonewall Riots” for
background), has created a strong camaraderie among gay men in the priesthood. A
core goal of the gay rights movement is to build political alliances that
provide for the safety and well-being of the gay community. The common and well
grounded fear of violence and persecution from straight people not only helps
strengthen this bonding among gay men in general, but has also generated new
political realities in the priesthood.

With the developing politicization of the gay
rights movement and the widespread portrayal in our electronic media and
literature of gay men as heroic yet still victimized by straight culture, much
compassion has developed for the cause of gay rights. And rightly so. However,
this compassion has superseded common sense and critical thinking at times. In
certain venues, anyone attempting to criticize the shortcomings of a gay man and
his leadership potential in a church setting can find himself or herself the
target of a piranha-like attack from gay-friendly supporters. I think it is
important to maintain a healthy balance between compassion for gay people and
the realities of Catholic Church clerical gay politics.

Of the many effective gay priests I know, there
are also those gay priests in leadership positions who lack the personal
strength and qualities to provide balanced leadership that always finds the best
solutions for the church. The worst gay church leaders I have met have been
terminally narcissistic and vindictive towards anyone who might call them to
task. The classic “power and control” explanation for their takeover and abuse
of church power is a correct analysis in a general sense, but lacks the nuanced
sexual politics specificity that many Catholics sense but find difficult to
identify, articulate, and challenge. The need for clerical control has been
expressed at the sexual level as well, and sometimes, unfortunately, with
children and young people. I have spoken with gay survivors of clergy sex abuse.
Often, their first sexual experience as confused gay teens was with the priest
who was counseling them. The priest decided to “comfort” the teen by taking him
to bed. That is abuse, statutory rape, and a legally prosecutable breach of a
superior-subordinate relationship. Those priests belong in jail.

Priests who lead secret, active sexual lives are
also open to blackmail and extortion. Those who abuse children are criminal
manipulators by trade. They will use any means possible to gain access to
children and then work to be protected once they have abused. When a predator
priest finds out that Bishop Bill and Father Fred went on a gay cruise together
last fall out of Miami, the bishop is compromised. The threat of outing makes
Bishop Bill a compliant secret sponsor of the abuser. Is homosexual politics in
the priesthood the sole cause of the sexual abuse crisis? No. Does it play a
central role in the complex reality of the sexual abuse crisis? Yes, it does.

A number of gay priests of integrity have also
left the clerical ranks in recent years. They have done so in many cases because
they have rejected the sexual politics they have encountered and have a desire
to lead a sexually authentic life with a partner/spouse. We have a number of
partnered priests who are members of our Celibacy Is the Issue (www.rentapriest.com)
group to which I belong. These priests need to speak out and share their
spiritual journeys with you and the wider church populace.

What is the percentage of straight versus gay
priests in the Roman or Latin rite of the priesthood? The few studies that exist
estimate a gay population of anywhere from 10 to near 70 percent. Why the
inconclusive spread? The hierarchy has successfully resisted any comprehensive
third-party study of the sexual orientation of the priesthood. Why won’t the
bishops allow a full and open analysis? What do they have to hide? This same
culture of clerical secrecy was encountered by journalists, police, and
insurance investigators trying to get to the bottom of the clergy sex abuse
atrocity. What are the bishops fighting to protect with this secrecy?

There are indicators that point to the reality of
a politicized homosexual majority in the priesthood and its hierarchy.

Richard Sipe has been researching sexuality in
the priesthood for over 40 years. He is a psychologist and educator who recently
co-authored Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes with Tom Doyle and Patrick Wall
tracking the nearly 2000-year history of abuse in the church. After reading Sex,
Priests, and Secret Codes I understood more clearly the issues that drove me out
of my chosen profession of parish priest. One of Sipe’s latest research areas is
the sexual orientation of bishops and how this impacts the inner workings and
policies of the Roman Catholic Church. Richard and I exchange emails and he has
posted some of our correspondence on his website. The following webpage from his
site discusses priestly sexuality and provides a revealing list of papal and
episcopal sexual orientation:

It is my opinion that today’s
priesthood/hierarchy is over 50% gay. That number brings significant political
power and influence to the group of men who legally own and direct our
institutional Roman Catholic Church in the style of a medieval oligarchy.

The early church that was closest to Jesus was
family-based and leadership was shared by women and men. According to Acts 15,
it was a democratic church where everyone had a voice. We have an established
history, a clear precedent, of a married priesthood in our tradition that was
suppressed at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. Women were also priests in the
early church for the first 500 years. (Torjesen, K. J. When Women Were Priests.
Harper San Francisco. 1993) Despite parish closures and the reduction of
sacramental ministry to the Faithful, the current hierarchy has reaffirmed that
celibacy will stay, and no discussion is even allowed concerning the ordination
of women. Given the dire need for more priests to drive our sacramental
ecclesiology, what is the hierarchy really trying to safeguard and protect? Why
do they limit membership in the priesthood only to men who promise not to marry
women? We all know the standard answers we get from the Vatican in response to
these questions about mandatory celibacy. Does the reality of a politicized
homosexual majority in the priesthood/hierarchy change your perception
concerning the motivation for these official reasons to maintain mandatory
celibacy for priests and exclude women and married persons from the inner
sanctums of church power?

In chapter seven of his book, The Changing Face
of the Priesthood, Donald Cozzens provides varying information about the
percentage of gay/straight men in the priesthood and seriously discusses the
thesis that priesthood is a gay profession. The theme of homosexuality in the
priesthood is a far from understated in his writing. It is a constant thread in
this book.

I recently spoke with a respected journalist who
has interviewed a number of Roman Catholic religious leaders – arch/bishops,
religious provincials, etc. I told him of my interest in researching
homosexuality in the priesthood and its political ramifications. He told me up
front that he was gay and stated that all but one of the religious leaders he
has interviewed recently are gay men. When I asked if, in his opinion, the
priesthood was a predominantly gay profession, his response was “Yes. Most
definitely.”

I was contacted by a “researcher” a few months
ago, likely a journalist or an author, who is trying to document the transfer of
funds from arch/diocesan bank accounts to gay rights organizations. She found
some of my writing on the Internet, was impressed with my frankness, and thought
that I could help her find a way to get through the organizational barbed-wire
fences protecting such information in the institutional church. I told her up
front that I had no magic wand to help her get this data. As I asked her more
specific details about her project, she politely wound down the conversation and
thanked me for my time. People are tracking this issue of sexual politics in the
priesthood – at a number of different levels.

Like many married Roman Catholic priests, I have
witnessed first-hand the practical consequences of the predominance of
homosexual leadership in the priesthood. During my eighteen years in the
seminary/priesthood a number of priests declared their love for me and invited
me to bed. The most surprise kiss I ever received was from a priest. I heard
many straight priests complain over the years how they were excluded from
projects or promotions/assignments because they did not take part in the social
and sexual activities of the gay majority. They were excluded and left behind
because they were not gay.

As a young priest, I was very impressed with an
older priest, Father Patrick. He was an excellent homilist, erudite, well-read,
and witty. I wanted to get to know him better. I was a young priest looking for
a mentor. We developed a friendship and spent hours discussing theology, etc.
One night he asked me to sit down for a talk. He began the conversation by
saying: “John Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzjohn.” At first, I laughed at his
apparent play on words. Then it hit me (remember my name is John) and I
understood what he was really saying. I started to feel nauseous. I was
scandalized in the truest and deepest sense of the word. He just looked at me
because the ball was in my court. He had come out to me and invited me, in not
too subtle code, to engage in anal sex. I recovered enough from the shock to
shake my head “no” in response. He ignored me from that day on.

I was an idealistic seminarian. I believed that
once I graduated from the predominantly gay Midwestern seminary of the 70’s that
I would be with the real, professional, and dedicated priests who lived the
ideals I had learned in my Catholic upbringing. (My contacts in the corporate
priesthood tell me that the seminaries are still predominantly gay.) I quickly
learned that there is a well-developed gay network in the priesthood and
homosexual activity is a litmus test for franchise-level participation in the
power structure. Something broke in me that day with Father Patrick. With
hindsight, I have come to believe that mandatory celibacy has become a political
tool used by gay men in the priesthood to sustain their safe haven and their
financial and sexual arrangements. In today’s church, celibacy does not work to
promote the Kingdom of Heaven, but to serve a small and secret kingdom right
here in plain sight on earth.

It makes clear sense why one out of every three
priests has left the corporate priesthood to marry – they were slowly and
methodically driven out by the pervasive majority gay culture. Many straight
priests were scandalized by the double standards they witnessed and they left
the sexual corruption they encountered to start a new life. Married priests are
usually described as having “left the priesthood to marry.” It should be more
accurately stated that many straight priests decided to leave the clerical
lifestyle because they found it difficult to live in a clearly homosexual
environment – all men and no women. Once that decision was made, it was only
natural for straight priests to marry women and get on with their lives. The gay
priests stayed in the clerical system that they dominate and where they have
their intimate significant-other relationships, while still publicly functioning
as priests in good standing with the blessings of the Vatican.

Of the straight priests who have stayed, many
have also taken to leading sexual double lives on a permanent or sporadic basis.
I know of straight canonical priests who go from woman to woman and they too are
moved from parish to parish when the scandal of their abuse of position is
exposed. I’ve talked with women whom priests have romanced with the false hope
of marriage then abandoned. There are also priests out there with hidden
families. Imagine the denial and stress that places on wives of active canonical
priests and their children. They are forced to live double lives too. They don’t
deserve a life of secrecy and avoidance of the truth.

For every straight priest who has become sexually
involved with a woman against his promise/vow of celibacy, I have observed three
gay priests who have broken their vows with men. The straight priests tend to
leave the corporate priesthood for traditional marriage life based on a
spiritual model of partnership. Gay church officials stay because they own the
church leadership system – culturally and legally. It protects and sustains
them, and gives them a forum for love and security that is well hidden from
critical view behind the veil of “celibacy”.

When news of the sex abuse atrocity hit the media
in 2002, do you recall the first corporate response from the US hierarchy? Their
proclamation was “Celibacy does not cause pedophilia.” Most people nodded in
agreement with this deflection, but there was a deeper issue at play. Of all the
subjects they could have addressed, why did they choose to protect mandatory
celibacy first and foremost? Mandatory celibacy and the myth of sexual
continence/purity are critical to protecting the gay majority culture of the
priesthood. So, it makes good sense for VOTF to choose celibacy as a central
issue. With mandatory celibacy lifted for priesthood, all viable candidates will
be able to present themselves for priestly studies and ordination. Many are
called to priesthood, but few to mandatory celibacy. The influx of married
persons and women into the priesthood would dilute the predominantly homosexual
power block in the church. Will the current hierarchy ever allow that to happen?

Given the sexual purity ethic that is fibrously
embedded in the fabric of our faith, the Catholic in the pew doesn’t want to
think about these realities, much less confront them. Most won’t even believe it
when inconveniently confronted with its reality – and that is a major reason why
the “celibacy” cloaking system continues to work so well for gay men in the
priesthood. In response to the occasional emergence of this reality in the
media, the Vatican responds that its priests may be gay, but they are celibate.
That is a quick sound bite dodge comprised of technical language. People hear
“celibacy” and they think “purity”. In reality, celibacy only means that a
priest has not publicly married a woman – that’s the last thing a gay man wants
to do. The canonical definition of celibacy focuses on public legal marriage,
not on personal sexual continence for priests, although that aspect is also
covered in Canon law. Most Catholics are unaware of this distinction and
consequently are easily manipulated back into their comfortable, compliant pew
seats.

For VOTF to be an instrument of change in the
church, it is critical to factor into your strategy the fact that the corporate
priesthood and hierarchy will not allow any changes that might expose or
threaten the safe haven that protects and benefits its gay majority. The problem
is not that priests are gay – that is accidental. The issue is that their
political agenda is driving people away and contributing to problems that offset
all the good things about our Roman Catholic faith. They are well aware that the
Roman Catholic community will not support a predominantly gay and sexually
active priesthood. They hide the reality of who they are, and the “laity”, who
have lifetime investments in the religious insurance program component of
Catholicism, are more than willing to enter into and embrace the illusion of
priests as straight men living a life of sexual purity to retain their life long
annuity investment in the promise of eternal life.

Church Reform Groups – a
history of NOT changing the institutional church

There are numerous church reform groups that have
come into existence since the repression of the spirit of Vatican II that began
in the 70’s. In all that time, none of these groups has effected any real change
in the role of Catholics in the institution, transparency of the hierarchy,
accountability of church leadership, or the less than chaste and simple
lifestyles of priests and church officials.

The reform groups still in existence today are
essentially support groups – people who have gathered in response to injury.
They have developed cottage industries of information exchange – conferences,
speakers’ bureaus, newsletters, fundraising advertisements, national
conventions, etc. These are worthwhile activities, but are only internally
efficacious and operate primarily for the members’ mutual benefit. They have
little to do with reform.

All of these activities have helped reform-minded
Catholics personally as a subset group of the Roman Catholic Church, but they
have not opened the priesthood to all who are called to serve. They have not
made local bishops accountable to their people for ministerial project focus,
general diocesan policies, or financial decisions. Their organizations have not
stopped parishes from being closed. They have not slowed the attrition of
straight priests leaving the corporate priesthood or the defection of cradle
Catholics to other denominations. They were not able to detect, expose, or stop
decades of systemic sexual abuse of our children. Some even deny the depth of
this problem and told me and other supporters of the survivor’s movement in the
mid 90’s to stand down because “the bishops are taking care of this problem.”

Church reform groups have essentially served the
Vatican’s objectives well. These groups provide a place for Catholics to go when
they figure out what is really going on in their institutional church. The
Vatican knows this and is more than willing to let reform groups exist because
they play a key role in its overall control strategy. Arch/bishops will even
grant audiences to, and receive studies and position papers from well-meaning
reform groups. The reform group members feel that they have achieved a great
accomplishment in gaining an audience with the prelate. In reality, they have
simply delivered him a detailed summary report of their activities. Pleasantries
and mutual good wishes are usually exchanged between the prelate and his
concerned guests in these rare meetings, but in the short and long run nothing
changes. At the end of the meeting the reformers have been contained and led on
by their own good intentions and the false hope and gratitude extended by their
local arch/bishops.

Catholics who belong to reform groups usually
continue to attend their local parish churches. Each Sunday they donate money to
their local church, which is legally owned by the bishop or a corporation that
the bishop controls. This system of episcopal ownership supports the Vatican’s
agendas. There is an element of self-deception here – the idea that “I am just
going to support my local parish because we have a good thing here.”
Unfortunately, that is part of the codependency that is required for being a
good Vatican Catholic. You focus on your local parish, but your donated
resources are immediately added to the bishop’s balance sheet and continue to
support the same mindsets and special arrangements that enabled the sex abuse
atrocity to take place and be covered up by a predominantly gay hierarchy for
decades. Partaking in this donation and ownership arrangement makes the laity
full enablers of the Vatican agenda.

VOTF – key things to
realize and do if you really want to change the church

Hope is not a strategy. If you want to change an
institution, you need to use the techniques applied by people like Saul Alinsky,
Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This means leafleting parishes,
presenting letters to the archbishop with the media taping you for the evening
news in front of his residence, and a relentless commitment to the art of polite
public confrontation in multiple venues. Do you have the stomach for that as
individuals and as an organization? I think you do because according to Vatican
II, you are the real Roman Catholic Church. Today’s Catholicism is like a good
meal being served on a dirty plate. Your institutional church has been hijacked
and you as a group have the ability to take it back and restore its wholeness
and respect in the eyes of the world.

Don’t be afraid to get into an adversarial
relationship with church leadership. You will not risk eternal damnation for
stepping out of the monarchical cult of personality model we have been trained
in since childhood. Holding church officials accountable as equals is the only
way you are going to accomplish change in the institutional church. Be pleasant,
be polite, be confrontational, and go into any meeting knowing what you want to
accomplish beforehand. They have their goals, so you must have yours. When they
tell you that you are being a bad Catholic, you must answer that they are being
bad arch/bishops.

Realize that your religious leadership is
predominantly gay. Nothing is going to change unless it benefits the safety and
sustenance of the gay majority that has taken control of the hierarchy and
priesthood. Just as the Jewish leadership of the early church had to undergo a
change of heart to open up the message of Jesus to Gentiles, today’s
predominantly gay priesthood/hierarchy needs to open their leadership chairs to
everyone. They will only do so if they are assured of their safety and your
support.

Much hope is being placed on the John Jay study
about the etiology of the sexual abuse crisis that is due out next year. This
study has been funded by the bishops for over $300K. Imagine a university study
declaring the safety of cell phone radio frequency radiation that was funded by
a major cell phone carrier. I don’t put much hope in its outcome based on some
of the initial information being leaked to the media. I believe it will provide
many talking points to enable you to keep driving for truth and justice in our
church. You will do much better to derive your information on clergy sex abuse
from researchers like Tom Doyle, Louise Haggett, Patrick Wall, Marie Fortune,
Marci Hamilton, and Richard Sipe, among others.

This past October, Chicago auxiliary bishop
Paprocki, who is a professor of law at Loyola, addressed the legal community
during a “red mass” in Grand Rapids, MI. Referring to the many lawsuits brought
against priests and bishops in the past 5 years, he described the church as
carrying a cross in dealing within the litigious culture of the United States.
He lamented that “the Church is under attack” and declared that these attacks
are coming from “the devil”. No arch/bishop that I am aware of has publicly
rebuffed Paprocki for his comments or made the effort to clarify where
responsibility belongs for the abuse. This says volumes about the mindset of
today’s hierarchy. With this attitude coming from a bishop who is a law
professor at a Catholic university, it is clear that our children are still very
much at risk. VOTF has plenty of work to do in supporting SNAP in changing state
statute of limitation laws and creating look back periods (“windows”) so that
today’s survivors can bring their perpetrators to justice. When SNAP requests
people to be present with them at government offices, local VOTF members should
ride in like the cavalry to the rescue. Since justice cannot be found in the
complicit chancery offices, we must achieve it for victim/survivors in our civil
courts.

Individual survivors of clergy sex abuse have
found strength, hope, and inspiration from the Survivors Network of those Abused
by Priests (SNAP). VOTF has the same potential, on a much wider scope, to
influence every Catholic in the pews who is confused, ashamed, and wanting to
feel better about the administration and public image of their church. To gain
their trust and support, you need to take concrete action to expose financial
and sexual improprieties in our church leadership. I was very glad to see Mary
Pat Fox quoted in two recent articles about clergy sex abuse. Every
controversial article about the church should include a rebuttal statement from
VOTF. You need to be available to the media to provide the other side of the
story. You need to be standing up and demanding accountability of church
leadership. You must require them to explain in detail what is driving their
decisions. That duty of citizenship is honorable in our country and is worthy of
praise and public support. That level of VOTF activity should be happening in
every major city across the country. As an initial project, I suggest you
support the vigiling parishes with media-attracting demonstrations of large
numbers of people. Tell the world that clerical excess should not mean that
communities have to lose their parish churches to pay off the legitimate
restitution to survivors of clergy sex abuse by priest perpetrators and the
arch/bishops that enabled that abuse.

VOTF leadership personnel who are directly or
indirectly in the employment of the church are a liability to your
effectiveness. The corporate world has a place for constructive criticism and
progressive and successful companies welcome such from their employees. Church
leadership has shown its lack of tolerance for internal reformers presenting
constructive criticism and its vindictiveness in dealing with those who are not
faithful to the power and control agendas of the arch/bishop. Anyone in your
leadership who pays their mortgage with a church paycheck is compromised. The
hierarchy will quickly bring pressure to bear upon them – either publicly or
clandestinely.

The primary allegiance of the arch/bishops is not
to the Catholics of the United States – it is to the Vatican. The Vatican comes
first. Your needs are secondary. Your role is ancillary. Your arch/bishop’s task
is to manage and control you – for your own spiritual and temporal good, of
course. This all happens in a friendly and spiritually coated milieu, and it is
your Catholic duty to comply with the will and directives of your arch/bishop.
The episcopal world is monarchical in its mindset. Your interaction with
arch/bishops happens within a Machiavellian framework – not the American
democratic political arena of fair play and elections every four years. American
Catholics are politically bi-cultural. The freedoms you exercise as a citizen do
not exist as a parishioner. Don’t confuse the two and assume rights in the
church that you really do not have to exercise. As a Catholic, you are a subject
in a stratified monarchical church organization. Obey or pay the price.

Canon Law is about creating lines of clerical
authority over church members and the punishments for crossing those lines. You
will never win a contest within the institutional church using Canon Law
arguments. The deck is stacked so the clerical establishment always wins over
the laity in a Canon Law contest.

The church is much richer than you are led to
believe. As survivors have found over the years, the bishops have almost
unlimited resources to spend against any efforts that challenge their position.
Bankruptcies have conveniently served as a two pronged strategy for the
hierarchy – to stop legal proceedings that will reveal unsavory details to the
public and to cry poor to the people filling the collection baskets on Sunday.
Church revenue comes not only from parishes, but from educational institutions,
medical enterprises, retirement facilities, land holdings, investments and more.
The bishops will spend money to thwart your effective witness against their
shortcomings. They will spend large amounts of church money to hire legal dream
teams and top-tier public relations firms to stop bad press about their sexual
and financial transgressions.

You do not own your parish church or school or
other real or financial asset– the bishop owns them, according to your state
laws, under the corporation sole of the current arch/bishop. Legally, you are a
guest in the bishop’s church building. You are allowed to be there at the
pleasure of your pastor and his arch/bishop. The vigiling parishes in the Boston
and New York can provide fresh and specific details on the harshness of this
reality. Even though you and generations of your family raised money for church
building funds, you do not own your church. When you leaflet your parish, you
will be asked to step off parish property and stand on the sidewalk. If you do
not obey, the police will be called in by the pastor or the arch/diocesan lawyer
to deal with you as a trespasser on “private property,” meaning the bishop’s
private property.

VOTF is losing membership because the bishops
have effectively co-opted your issues in the eyes of many Catholics. They’ve
marketed their charter for the protection of children and young people and
instituted diocesan “audits” to assure compliance. They are doing exactly what
the donating Catholic wants to make all the ugliness go away. You must create
new cogent issues that have gut-level appeal to the Catholic in the pews. VOTF
is made up of a lot of sharp people. You have the brains and acumen do this
effectively. You also have the Holy Spirit on your side. Once the issues are
chosen, practical strategies with achievable outcomes must follow and be acted
upon concretely. Never give up. Always be planning the next move. Like Francis
Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven”, remember that the pursuer always has the tactical
advantage and the greatest chance for success.

Push your “priests of integrity” to join you and
to work with you in your new issues and strategies. This will be a litmus test
for them because it will put them right in the middle of the action and push
them to take a position. The real priests of integrity will do the right thing
and stand with you. You’ll find out who your true clerical supporters are when
you ask them to join you in the streets.

Do you recall the traditional Catholic social
concept of the “preferential option for the poor”? This principle has its roots
in the biblical notion of justice where God calls us to be advocates for the
voiceless and the powerless. The “poor” of our 21st century are the
victim/survivors of clergy sexual abuse. Support them even more than you have in
the past because they are today’s voices crying in the desert. Use your
prophetic voice—loudly, clearly, and often. Stand in the rain with the survivors
when they call you for help. When victim/survivors of clergy sexual abuse
achieve justice and healing, our church will be well on the road to achieve the
same and regain the respect we Roman Catholics and our abundant church tradition
deserve in the eyes of the world.